25-29/52 - A Harry Potter Christmas

Hope everyone is having a great holiday vacation! I should've stayed at Hogwarts for Christmas.

24/52 - Red

Pokemon Blue was the first videogame I played in my own house, and I suppose that's one of the reasons I have such an attachment to the series. Up until then, my only access to videogames was at friends' houses, since my parents weren't too keen on bringing me into that world. In 1998, I rented a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Blue from Blockbuster video and played it like crazy. I made it to the Elite Four, but couldn't beat the Champion. I had to return the cartridge before I was able to finish the game. 

23/52 - Boxer

There are times when I really wish I was interested in watching boxing. Luckily I can just watch "When We Were Kings" and get all the satisfaction I need from that. Man, that is the best movie.

22/52 - Goblin

There are times when I want to go through the Dungeons and Dragons books and literally redesign everything. Not because I think everything is poorly designed, but because it would be a lot of fun.

21/52 - Leon S. Kennedy

A tribute to Resident Evil 4, the second best game on Nintendo's Gamecube. I have to say, as far as common story archetypes go, "remote village with a terrible secret" is one of my absolute favorites.

20/52 - Gold

One of my favorite parts of this whole big series is going through designs and finding real-world clothing to match up with the characters. I don't know why, I just love it. This is Gold, who went on a great Pokemon adventure and still managed to send money to his mom every once in awhile.

19/52 - The Other

GRRM has a long way to go in the next two Song of Ice and Fire books to make the Others into anything but a ghostly background menace. Rotting polar bears and crystal swords are pretty cool, though.

18/52 - Wolverine

I love Hugh Jackman as much as the next guy, but he's neither short, nor ugly enough to play Wolverine. Sorry, Hugh.

17/52 - Blue

Professor Oak's little jerk of a grandson, from the Pokemon series.

16/52 - Superman

15/52 - HULK

I don't really know a lot about the Hulk, but I liked Plant Hulk, and I sure do like drawing him. I can't believe they didn't cast Steve Buscemi as Bruce Banner in any of the movies, though. Seems like a no-brainer.

14/52 - Cloud

I haven't played Final Fantasy VII in close to ten years, and much of the additional material that Square put forth really ruined the memory for me. Regardless, when I was in eighth grade, Cloud was man, just the coolest.

13/52 - Nathan Drake

Nathan Drake, from the Uncharted series. The prettiest games out there. Now if you'll excuse me, I have climb this wall and move some statues around.

Complete Works

This is a small drawing running in today's Wall Street Journal. It accompanies an article about how aging musicians can feel constrained by a boxed set and all the finality that that implies. The article is about a specific anecdote from Elvis Costello, but this guy is just a stand in for older rockers in general.

Pretty quick turnaround -- about a day and a half from phone call to due date, but I still managed to get something I'm pretty happy with.

You can read the article on the WSJ's website here.

Big thanks to AD David Bamundo.

12/52 - San

San, from Princess Mononoke. Princess of the spirits of ghouls, beasts, and ancient Gods. My favorite movie.

11/52 - Batman

When I was a kid I wore Batman pajamas pretty much everywhere. Especially when riding around in the Batman wagon that my dad built. 

10/52 - Skull

I don't know what this guy is.

9/52 - Tifa

Tifa Lockhart, from Final Fantasy VII. Everyone's favorite love interest who DOESN'T get impaled on a nine foot sword.

And hey, I found out this thing got accepted into this year's Society of Illustrators annual as well. Neat!

8/52 - Solomon Grundy

Do you guys know that DC has its own version of the Hulk and he is a zombie who used to be a mobster? And he's named after a nursery rhyme? Yeah I don't know what's up with that either.

7/52 - Kuja

Kuja, from Final Fantasy IX. Of all the designs Yoshitaka Amano made his his lifetime, Kuja's is probably the most Yoshitaka Amano-y.

6/52 - Lizardman

Lizardman, from one of the many worlds in which Lizardmen exit.

5/52 - Link

Link, from the Zelda series. Man, just blazing through these things.

4/52 - Amarant

Amarant, from FF9. A character I liked but never used.

3/52 - Richter Belmont

Richter Belmont, from the Castlevania series.

2/52 - Ganon

Ganon, from the Zelda series.

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Also, I'm very pleased to announce that my Frog Kaiju drawing won the Silver medal in the Institutional category of this year's Society of Illustrators annual!

1/52 - Zidane

One out of a set of fifty-two small drawings that are going out to folks who were nice enough to buy the videogames print I posted about earlier. The majority of these things are videogame characters, since I needed to sorta turn the ol' brain off for a bit in order to crank these out quickly. Zidane is the protagonist of Final Fantasy 9.

6x9", sumi ink and ebony pencil on Strathmore cold press.

Brunch Date

I drew a few different little characters for this month's issue of San Francisco Magazine. Each of them is the type of a guy you can expect to find (and potentially date!) at some of the city's brunch destinations.

Sleep like Dead Men, Wake Up like Dead Men.

I was extremely happy to be asked to contribute to this year's edition of the Cloudy Collection. If you're unfamiliar, the Cloudy Collection is a set of themed letterpress prints curated by cartoonist and entrepreneur David Huyck. Artists are given a theme, size, and set of pantone colors and then left to their own devices. The prints are then sold as a set on the Cloudy Collection's website. This year's theme is Hanging with the Dead.

I'm excited to be included among this years amazing crop of talent, which includes David Huyck, Natasha Allegri, Emily Carroll, Michael DeForge, Michael Slack, and Steve Wolfhard. The work that these folks churned out is really unbelievable.

Videogames Print

Limited edition "Videogames" Giclée print on super heavy 100% Cotton rag, hot press, natural white 330 GSM paper. Edition of 50, signed and numbered! Never to be printed again! A sweet 24" on the long side. Each comes with some freebies, including a small original drawing (along the lines of these guys). $65, shipping included.

UPDATE: Annnnnd we are SOLD OUT! Thanks so much, everyone!

Screening Applicants

I recently completed a job for PLANSPONSOR about companies using social networking and internet resources to screen prospective job applicants. Seems a lot of companies aren't taking advantage of this useful tool, and might be accidentally hiring secret dinosaur men. Who knew?

AD SooJin Buzelli

I knocked the first sketch out in about ten minutes and then spent about a full day trying to figure out a couple more, only to have that first sketch chosen in the end. I coulda kicked myself. I am pretty happy with that glob man in the third sketch, though.

Another reject

This is another one of those drawings I got pretty far into before calling it quits. In this particular case, I realized that there were some things I could've done a lot better, and there was a smarter way of conveying the scene. I'll call this a very well-developed study and file it away. I'm almost done the revised drawing and I'm happy to say that it's significantly better.

This is for another one of those short stories.

Videogames Auction

Bidding is now OPEN for the one-of-a-kind, never-gonna-be-made-again skateboard with my Videogames design on it. Bidding closes in a couple days, and prices are still relatively low. Get it while the getting's good! All procedes from the auction go to AIGA Colorado to help fund the arts community in Denver.

BID BID BID

Advice to Young Associates

This is a piece I recently completed for the fall issue of Litigation magazine. It ran alongside the feature story on advice for young associates with dreams of becoming trial lawyers. Pretty much everything I know about law practices is culled from Phoenix Wright and Boston Legal, which I don't think are entirely accurate representations of the industry. A lot of the advice was applicable to most professions (distinguish yourself, gain specialized knowledge, etc), which made it easier for me to relate.

I did a couple spots for the article as well. The one below is about sampling.

AD Jill Tedhams

This is the debut issue of Litigation Magazine's redesign. My good buddy Luke Williams is a graphic design supertalent and worked on their rebranding. He was also good enough to use pieces from my portfolio as placeholders in his designs, which led directly to this job. Lesson: make friends.

On another note, I am on tumblr, tumbln the dumb drawings that don't even warrant a blog post over here.

Videogames

A little while ago I was asked by Joe Marsh and AIGA Colorado to participate in Bordo Bello 2011, a fundraiser to help the arts community in Denver. The project line was simple: create a skateboard deck to be auctioned off at the 2011 event. Go nuts, basically.

Blogger has a cap on image size, so here's larger version for your perusal: EMBIGGEN.

I didn't do much skateboarding as a kid, but I was pretty into videogames, though I didn't have any of my own until I was able to buy them myself. This is more or less a stream-of-consciousness drawing, relating my hazy, romanticized memories of the videogames I played as a kid.

I asked my best buddy Diego Garcia (who you may know as @radstronomical) who is a dedicated pixel-smith to help me out with a couple elements of the drawing. The most important, obviously, was this arcade screen.
And here are some process do-dads.

You can learn more about Bordo Bello at their website.